Bbs hatching question

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Ingersoll

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I have been hatching my own bbs for my newly hatched axys. I have been having a hard time separating the bbs from the egg. I shut the air off amd wait 5 min and i still have eggs at the bottom when i go to suck the bbs out. Should I be waiting longer for them to separate or is there another way to separate bbs from egg shells?
 
Take a small flashlight and put it on one end of the tank for 5 minutes or so. The vast majority will swim directly to the light. This should help. To make sure I don't suck up any eggs I try to clean the area in front of the light by pushing the eggs away with a turkey baster.
 
Order decapsulated bbs. They're SO much easier!
 
Where can I find decapsulated bbs? Also Is the larvae ingest an egg will it kill them?
 
Eggs can cause impaction in very young larvae, so it's best to eliminate them.
 
I just found a place to get them: Results for BRINE SHRIMP There are some youtube videos showing how to hatch the ones specifically from here :)

I just bought the 4oz container which they say is equiv. to 50 batches of 1/2 tsp of shelled bbs... so we shall see how well it works!
 
Brine Shrimp Direct is usually a good source, but rumor has that they're out of stock at the moment.
 
It says you can feed non hatched brine shrimp to your fish, is this the same for the hatchlings?
 
NO!!!
If the eggs have the brown outer shell, not even fish should get them- impaction can happen to anyone at anytime... DEcapsulated bbs eggs (Without the brown outer shell) Can be fed to fish, but not baby axies- especially as it's the live wiggle factor of bbs which makes them so enticing for baby axies, and without that there is little to no chance they will eat them. It is a lot of work to do, but in the long run, it is really worth hatching bbs. If you're having trouble turning over everyday, perhaps try keeping them in a 5L cake container- I've been using them this time around and it's usually three to four days between when I need to restart it.
Hope this helps :D
 
Haha I knew that the brine shrimp eggs could not be fed to the hatchlings I was curious about the decapsulated ones! :) I am doing good with the brine shrimp, my issue is the eggs, even after 36+ hours I stil have eggs floating around with the bbs. I am not sure how I can avoid this, but at this point if I do end up with eggs with the hatchlings I have to sit there and make sure their mouths stay away from them haha. I might try put the bbs in a seperate container first then removing them and having even less eggs. I do agree though everything is worth the work watching them grow! :)
 
I may have been lucky but not one of my 130 hatchlings died from eating a cyst. They don't move so are less likely to be eaten. I did my best to separate but it wasn't 100 percent possible. The eggs that hadn't hatched usually floated so I skimmed the top of the water with my BBS net. That was the most brilliant device. Great for cleaning water too and rinsing black worms later down the track. I also sometimes elevated one side of the tank so that eggs that had sunk would fall down to one side. Then covered that side with a tea towel and used a light to coax the axies to the safe side. Enjoy all the fun :)
 
Yeah...I've been having trouble with them as well, but nowhere near as much as when I was using my 20X20cm cube as a hatchery. For me, I've found a much greater surface area leads to much less contamination, as does letting it sit for as long as possible with the light over a clear patch of floor (sometimes that is only a few minutes, but every bit counts), and then using a pippette (100 off ebay for three AUD) to suck up the shrimp from close to the floor of the container. When the hatchery has been going for a few days, the contamination rate does increase, but it's still lower than the other methods I've tried.
 
It takes 48 hours of circulating in saltwater to hatch. Then 10 min to get layers of eggs and shells. Good luck.
 
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